


Patient Zero

by frith_in_thorns



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: AU for Eiffel in the finale, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, back on Earth when they all live together, tumblr prompt fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 03:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13355094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns
Summary: Eiffel's sick. Heknowsit's not Decima. There's no need for worrying.Like that ever stopped anyone.





	Patient Zero

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a lovely anon on tumblr and beta'd by jabberwocky.
> 
> As requested in the prompt, this is AU so that Eiffel didn't lose his memory in the finale.

When you shared a house with minimum three other people and an artificial intelligence, keeping anything private became a difficulty level Eiffel generally tried to avoid.

Not that he started out with something to hide, precisely. But when he woke up hot and achy with a tight feeling in his chest, his first instinct was to freeze up in panic.

_I'm getting sick. It's happening again._

The more logical part of his brain eventually started to get into gear. It was winter. People — normal people — got sick in winter. It was probably nothing.

Strike that. _Definitely_ nothing. Nothing to worry about. Anyway, he probably wasn't even getting sick.

He had sort of convinced himself by the time he got up. Or, at least, he had succeeded in dumping his thoughts on the matter into the part of his mind where he locked away such things as deadlines and awkward conversations — vague dread leaked out, but there was enough stuff in there that vague dread was _always_ leaking out, so he was used to it.

"Doug, you okay?" Minkowski asked. (She tended to call him _Doug_ these days, but he had tried and absolutely could not manage saying _Renée_ to her face. It sounded _wrong_. And she and Lovelace still called each other by their surnames anyway.) "You're being very quiet. It's unsettling."

"Oh?" Eiffel said. His throat was sore. He gulped some more coffee. "Maybe I'm trying to cultivate an air of mystery."

"Huh," Minkowski said. "I know a mystery, actually. The mystery of who stacked the dishwasher in the exact way I told him to stop doing."

"It doesn't make any difference!" Eiffel protested. "Everything still gets washed — Hera, back me up here!"

"He actually is correct," Hera agreed.

"It's not as efficient!" Minkowski protested.

"I think you might find there's effectively no difference," Hera said.

"See?" Eiffel said. "Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, dishwasher… dishwasher." He coughed a couple of times.

Minkowski dropped her ongoing campaign of The One Right Way To Do Household Chores (she had tried it with Lovelace, but Lovelace had immediately called her bluff by threatening a general strike) to frown at Eiffel again. "Are you sure you're okay? You look a bit pale."

"I'm fine," Eiffel said. He instantly wanted to cough again, of course, but managed not to. Minkowski kept looking at him anxiously, and that was when he decided firmly that he _absolutely_ was going to avoid getting sick, ever. She might appear to spend an inordinate amount of energy stressing over stuff like the dishwasher, but Eiffel knew that it was to distract herself from far more salient worries such as how much power Goddard might still be able to exert over them, and what exactly Jacobi and Lovelace were plotting, and how to properly safeguard Hera's hardware, and —

He wasn't about to add "potential Decima outbreak" to that list.

Luckily it was relatively easy to hide in his bedroom with a laptop, doing nothing more strenuous than watching Netflix. He still tried to cough too much in case Hera noticed, but she tended not to notice purely biological quirks as much as his human housemates did.

By the end of the day he could no longer fool himself that he wasn't ill. He had to force himself to eat dinner, and his head and throat both ached abominably. He went out for some fresh air, which was alarmingly tiring, but it gave him the chance to do all the coughing he'd been repressing.

He checked his hands after the fit had passed. No red — he wasn't coughing up any blood. Yet.

(And he _wasn't going to be_ , of course, because it definitely _wasn't_ Decima.)

The next morning, it was a struggle to get up. He knew full well that he was feverish, although he tried not to think about it. (He had also slept badly, since all the _not worrying_ had kept him awake.)

"Are you feeling alright?" Lovelace said.

"I asked him that yesterday, " Minkowski said.

"Hmm. He looks really pale."

Eiffel groaned. "Don't tag-team me. I'm fine." Obviously, that was when he really wanted to start coughing again, but he managed to resist most of the urge. Only a couple of coughs forced their way out.

"Doug?" Minkowski queried.

"I'm allowed to cough without being labelled Patient Zero for Motaba or something!" He retreated before he had to defend himself — or cough — further. Let them think he was sulking.

Unfortunately for his cunning plan, he couldn't actually hide forever. "Doug?" Hera asked, a couple of hours later. "The latest server bank just got delivered. Lovelace wants to know if you can help get it up to the attic."

Eiffel sighed unenthusiastically, and privately cursed the delivery company's timing. "I guess."

"She says if you're not feeling up to it —"

"No, it's fine," he said, quickly. He stood up, and grimaced at the sensation of his brain slamming into the front of his skull. "It's fine," he repeated.

They were having servers for Hera delivered in a steady drip, which probably didn't make them significantly less detectable to anyone doing half-decent surveillance, but made them all feel slightly more secure. (Hera didn't complain much about how slowly the torturous drop in her processing power was being restored, although she did on occasion point out how heroic she was being by not doing so.) The new server room was in the attic, since the basement would be impossible to ventilate. Dom had got a builder in to reinforce the floor.

"You'd think they'd make these more portable," Lovelace puffed, as the three of them worked together to manoeuvre several thousand dollars of unwieldy hardware up the stairs.

The retracting set of steps up to the attic was the difficult bit. They'd had some practice with the previous server banks, but although they had got their technique down it was still hard work.

Eiffel realised partway through that he really should have asked for a different way of doing this bit. Lovelace was at the top of the steps, pulling, with Minkowski balancing dangerously halfway up to keep it steady. Eiffel, with the longest reach, was pushing from the bottom, and supporting the most weight.

His arms started to shake. He bit into his lip as he tried to hold firm, but he was was beginning to feel sick to his stomach from the strain.

Things narrowed. He pushed and pushed, and at last the weight was abruptly gone. Eiffel staggered, and a rush of vertigo slammed into him, blacking out his sight. His knees gave way.

Then he was lying on the floor while someone shook him and called his name in increasing panic. Minkowski. He tried to speak, but ended up coughing instead.

"That's blood!" Minkowski snapped. "We need to —"

Eiffel flinched, an icy panic seizing his chest. "Decima," he croaked.

Minkowski squeezed his wrist tight enough to bruise. "Eiffel, _god_ —"

"Calm. Down!" Lovelace spoke firmly, and Eiffel turned towards her, eyes wide. She forced his mouth open. "Look. He's _not_ coughing up blood. He bit his tongue or something."

"Eiffel?" Minkowski asked, anxiously. 

He had got enough consciousness back to feel ridiculous lying on the floor with them both crouched down over him. Eiffel started to sit up, very gingerly. He was dizzy enough that he didn't protest Minkowski and Lovelace both helping him. He leaned against Minkowski's shoulder.

Lovelace put a palm to his forehead. "How long have you known you're sick?" she demanded.

"Not… long?" Eiffel tried. He quailed under her glare. "Well, maybe yesterday, but I wasn't sure until today."

"Great job," Lovelace said, sarcastically. "Minkowski, stop hyperventilating. It's not Decima."

"It's not?" Eiffel asked. 

Lovelace shuddered. " _Trust_ me," she said. "I've seen the onset three times now. They were all… unmistakably dramatic."

"You're definitely sure?" Minkowski demanded. Eiffel was pretty sure she was even paler than him.

" _Yes_."

Eiffel groaned in relief. The release of tension was enough to set the walls gently spinning again.

"You're sick, though," Minkowski accused. "You _knew_ it, and you didn't say anything."

"Ugh," Eiffel said. "Maybe we could postpone the interrogation?"

Lovelace shuffled round so that she was facing him. "Hiding that you're ill is a stupid thing to do," she said.

"Yeah, I'm getting that."

" _Not_ because you get yelled at! Because it's a stupid thing for its own sake. Okay?"

Eiffel sighed. "I was scared," he admitted.

"Yeah, no shit," Lovelace said. "You know what else is scary? Seeing you collapse, and _not knowing what the hell is going on_."

"I'm sorry," Eiffel said. He must have sounded appropriately chastised, because Lovelace let up.

"If we're all done with the dramatics, you should probably be in bed," Minkowski said.

"Yeah," Eiffel said. "That sounds pretty great, actually."

"Right." She and Lovelace hoisted him to his feet — they were clearly taking no chances. He was half-worried they were going to go as far as depositing him on the bed and tucking him in, but fortunately he was still allowed _some_ dignity.

"I'll bring you some tea and check on you in a bit," Minkowski said. "Get some rest, okay?"

"Yeah," Eiffel said. He flopped onto the mattress with a groan. "Rest is about to happen."

"Glad to hear it," Lovelace said. "Feel better soon, idiot."

She left the room with that, making sure that she had the last word. Even though he was _ill_. Eiffel grinned to himself, and finally relaxed for the first time in two days. 

He was asleep immediately.


End file.
